Editor – As 2026 commences people across Scotland continue to worry. Our weekly shop gets ever more expensive, and the cost of heating spirals out of control.
European leaders continue to bankroll Zelensky and want Ukraine to keep fighting a hopeless war until every Ukrainian man of military age is killed. I hold no brief for Putin, but it must now be obvious that a war of attrition inevitably means that the larger adversary will emerge victorious.
Three million Ukrainians have fled to Poland as they want to escape a war they cannot win. In August and September when border restrictions were lifted more than 200,000 Ukrainian men escaped to Poland rather than be press ganged into the army.
Macron, Mertz and Starmer, the coalition of the “willing”, place all our futures in jeopardy as they agree to increase military expenditure to five per cent of GDP. Their rush to militarisation is just a wild gambit to keep their own jobs as they stoke nationalistic sentiment.
They say that Russia is a threat and wants to march into western Europe. All the time we know that Russia is the largest country in the world, relatively under- populated, and has vast reserves of oil, minerals and rare earths. The Russian threat just isn’t credible.
It would be better for all, if we negotiated a non- aggression pact with Russia rather than stoke the flames of war. Cheap Russian energy would be a boon. Transferring five per cent of UK GDP back into the public sector would be of immense benefit. The government could even afford to pay the WASPI women.
We see acts of piracy and the murder of South Americans in small boats even as they cling to the wreckage. The imposition of bully boy tariffs and Trump’s protection of his techno friends dooms the UK to a subservient economy and debt bondage.
Do not forget that we pay more than £100 billion a year (more than 50 per cent of the annual cost of the NHS) from the UK to US corporations in commission and transaction charges.
Nationalist groupings that blame immigrants are becoming ever stronger throughout Europe. No one appears to have noticed that over two million Syrians have returned to their villages since the fall of Bashir Assad just over a year ago. Are they getting any help from the West to rebuild their homes and make their lives viable?
Blaming refugees is easy – but they would not flee their home countries if they had a future in the land of their birth. Often, their countries have been destroyed by wars that have been orchestrated by Western powers. The CIA and MI6 have a lot to answer for.
The old political parties want us to feel helpless in the face of declining living standards and never- ending wars that threaten to spill over into nuclear devastation.
There is a better way; a new world is possible. We, ordinary people, need to organise. It is for this reason that I am helping to set up Your Party, here in Dunoon.
Scotland needs a radical socialist party that speaks up for ordinary people.
Mick Rice
Blairmore
